This used to be true with programming too, there weren't many tools so you had to write your own or modify someone else's (and you shared them with others). If a new type of computer came out you would port the tools are maybe even write some from scratch. Today the kids can't even begin to imagine this: if there's not a button on their IDE's to do what they want then they don't do it, they don't bother learning a scripting or shell languages to do what they need. I mean it's a frigging computer, the whole point of it is to be able to program it to do what you want it to do!

I'd argue it still is, to a large extent. I'm fresh out of uni, but I (and several of those I graduated with) used Vim/Emacs as their (DIY) IDE of choice.

(FWIW, my course spanned Java, Python and C, and only for Java did we use an IDE (Eclipse).)

Return values are handled oddly in pretty much every major language. Many API calls want to return something simple- int or bool- and if anything is more complex than that, generally require an actual data structure to be returned, often as a reference. This means that the "I didn't do this" action has a variety of ways to be be passed back- none of them even close to standard.

If something returns a distance, magnitude, or size, "0" normally means "Error, nothing happened" which is often the same as "Sure, I wrote 0 bytes. Really."If something needs to distinguish between success ("I did the thing 0 times as requested" and failure "I couldn't do the thing because of an error condition"), then sometimes a -1 is returned, or an exception thrown, or something else.

This is true of mostly just C, though it does get used a little in C++ as well. (To be fair, C-family languages are the majority of popular languages.)Most high-level languages use exceptions, and Haskell (and to a lesser extent, Rust) use the Maybe type so that the type system forces error checking to occur.

Judging by the entries in my log files, a very simple but effective mitigation technique would be to run wordpress under a path like/blog instead of the root directory - most attempts are just blindly searching for vulnerabilities at the default path.

and many more. All of which many find to be much more suited for servers than Fedora or Debian with systemd.

Honestly, even with systemd[1] Gentoo is actually a pretty awesome distro for a server; definitely better than Debian. The compile-times are less of an issue since most of the really large programs aren't ones you'd install on a server (chrome, libreoffice), and being able to install any of the last N stable versions (sometimes side-by-side using slots) of a package is pretty convenient when you have third party software. The way configuration files are updated after an upgrade instead of during is also much more convenient, and the stable branch is also significantly more up-to-date than Debian's.

[1] While I use systemd on my own system and find it works well for me, I can easily understand why some people would prefer to stick with one of the alternatives (at least until all the bugs get ironed out).

It's a little unclear if it'll be part of the FX lineup, but apparently AMD will be releasing a new line of CPUs next year under the codename Zen. The core count will go up to 16, so it sounds like it'll definitely be a spiritual successor to the FX line, even if it's not part of it. (That is, it could actually be competitive against an i7.)

The impressive part of the tab completion of Powershell is how context sensitive it is. When I typed the where command, I entered -p and it expanded it to -Property (although just -p would work too). But the fun part was that I could then type e and then go through the list of property names that are returned from the dir command that begin with the letter e; first Exists, then Extension. So it was aware what was being passed to the where command on the pipeline and returning the correct properties for that object.

It's worth noting that this is also available in zsh, which (I believe) has always been more feature heavy than bash.

(Not to say it isn't cool that Powershell can do that, merely that bash probably isn't the best comparison.)

The result was I paid $200 for an FX-8350, which probably wasn't AMD's fastest chip at the time

Maybe not, but close - the FX-8370 is just a slightly better binning of the same part.

I remember all of the benchmarks compared it to the i7, which of course trounced it.

Funny thing about that - there were some pretty major discrepancies at the time between benchmarks done using Intel's compiler and those done using GCC. When using GCC, the FX smoked the i7 - it wasn't until the next generation (or possibly the one after that) that the FX started to lag behind. Even today it's reasonably competitive (if not faster than) against Haswell i5s.

The FX-9590 doesnt seem to be a significant step up in performance from the 8350.

The FX-9590 isn't even a step-up - it's the exact same part, overclocked ridiculously (hence the 220W TDP). It's a stop-gap measure by AMD to try and disguise the fact that the FX line-up hasn't been updated in years.

I'm planning an upgrade myself atm, and as much as I prefer AMD, they're literally a non-option to me (even with the sticker shock from i7 prices). I hope Zen goes well for them, because otherwise Intel has a monopoly on high-end CPUs...

You don't need pressure to write with a fountain pen -- at all. (The modern competitor is a rollerball, not a ballpoint; rollerballs don't give you amount of flexibility on nib grind or opportunities for flex and shading effects that you get with a fountain, but at least you're not forced to use tons of pressure). Allows different, more comfortable grips.

I'll second this - using a fountain pen is worth it just for the ergonomics alone. Before I used (not inexpensive) rollerballs, and even then my hand would be hurting after a test or exam, but with a fountain pen I could easily write for more than double the time. It also worked out cheaper too - a $10 bottle of ink with a $20 pen lasted me the duration of my 6 year course, and the bottle is only half-empty.

The App Permissions seem to be missing the crucial ability to deny internet access to an app. There are apps where network data connectivity is the problem. Similarly, I wonder if Google will have this permission setting capability on its internal applications. I know that I have a rather tightly worn tin foil hat when it comes to Google and the information they get, but the Xprivacy 'deny' list on my phone is a mile long, and that's with most of their apps frozen or forcibly pulled out, I find that Google's data access on the platform demands a tight leash, leading the 'privacy' and 'permissions' charge to ring of hypocrisy - "we'll make sure that only we have your location" doesn't mean much to me:/

The ability to block internet access would effectively block ads. On the plus side, there are plenty of firewall apps in the Play store (though they do require you to have a rooted device).

However, they're powerful because of it. There's no "generics meta programming" because generics don't offer any sort of comparable power. That said, the reason template meta programming is so useful is because C++ lacks reflection.

I disagree. Take a look at D templates (and compile-time function evaluation) - that syntax will be easily readable to anyone familiar with a C family language, because it's the same syntax (just with 'static' or 'pure' peppered everywhere).

C++ template meta-programming is hard for two reasons. The first is that templates use a syntax of their own, which is one more thing to learn. The second is that the template language is functional, which is quite alien to most C++ programmers. D uses native D syntax to do the same thing (with the requirement that functions be pure), and that's much easier to read.

Seriously IDEs are great! I don't understand people on Slashdot who think if its not hard, its not worthy!

That's a bit of a strawman. IMO, the real issue is that people see it as a false dichotomy between a good text editor (Vim, Emacs, etc.) and a kitchen sink of tools attached to something little better than Notepad with syntax highlighting + autocompletion (e.g. Visual Studio). In that comparison, the text editors win because the vast majority of programming comes down to text editing (and possibly thinking, but you don't need a computer for that), and typical IDEs are pretty mediocre at that.

Note that it's a false dichotomy - you can get the benefits of both, either by integrating a proper text editor into your IDE (e.g. Eclim adds Vim to Eclipse) or by adding many plugins to your text editor - I use Vim with 53 plugins, and I have every feature on your list (although hovering over a variable is replaced with typing a shortcut while the cursor is over it). You only need about 10 to get most of the benefits though, especially if you only work with one or two languages.

- Plasma 4 had the best systray in all the linux ecosystem, allowing KDE native, "new" Unity-style indicators, and old tray icons. Now neither of those work in Plasma 5, leaving empty space or not showing at all. Even Unity has ways to show old tray icons such as Pidgin. When asking about it, was instructed to install stuff like stalonetray...are we in FVWM now?

I've got a pretty good idea why this is happening. The old API for tray icons didn't handle the case where you had multiple systrays correctly (e.g. dual monitors) - the icon would only appear on one of them. The new API fixes this, but as you have noticed not everything supports it. The best solution is probably for someone to go around submitting patches to all the projects using the old API, but that's obviously going to take some time...